Rorrim
by Scythers
Summary: Self-reflection is always difficult. Ken has a heart-to-heart with his mirror and his madness. [5/5: "Epilogue" // Kensuke // COMPLETE]
1. Foreward/Splash

**Title:  **Rorrim.

**Length:**  Four chapters and an epilogue.

**Rating:**  R, for the mature themes (homosexuality, self-injury, character death, et al) that can be found within.

**Full summary:  **There is a subtle line between genius and insanity; heaven and hell; life and death.  For Ichijouji Ken, he has a plan: to completely breach these boundaries.  Words, thoughts, feelings, and love – he's talking to his mirror with a razor to pale flesh.

**Author notes:  **If _Oblivious Signals _is a happy fanfiction, then _Rorrim _is certainly its polar opposite.  This was written to appease my restless muses, who clambered for me to dapple in something a lot darker.  Ken will be your guide on this trip.  Step lightly, please.  Oh yes; sometimes this fanfiction will remotely resemble certain others with word choice or style (chapter four especially).  It's homage to my favorite authors.  Can you pick out who they are?

**Thanks to:  **Marc, Phil, J, TP, Allekto, Miome, anyone and everyone else, and you, the reader.

**Disclaimer:**  I own the plot.  Go me.

And now you may proceed.__


	2. Words

* * *  
  
**R O R R I M**  
chapter one  
  
_"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."_  
  
* * *

  
"My mother called you 'magnificent' when she first brought you to me.  
  
"I remember, because I was sitting at my desk as she and my father struggled with bringing you in through the door. It was rather comical, since they could have easily turned you horizontally, and you wouldn't have had to scrape against the top of my door as you came on through. They set you down, right next to me in fact, and my mother was smiling. She said, 'Isn't this magnificent, Ken? I bought it at this strange little thrift shop in the city, and I just _knew _it could liven up your room.' My impression of her could use some work. Anyway, I smiled complacently, not desiring to tell her that I didn't need her help in 'livening' up my life thank-you-very-much; casting a glance at you. I'm sure you saw, though.  
  
"Now that I think about it, perhaps you_ are_ all she cracked you up to be. There is something naturally charming in your long, looping framework that has been painted with a near-shimmering gold paint. Your base keeps you upright, and the southernmost point touches the ground comfortably. And then there is the surface itself, lustrous and smooth, reflecting a million points of light back into my eye from wherever they may have originated.  
  
"Oh -- this -- this is ludicrous. I'm talking to a mirror.  
  
"But . . . you're all I have right now. Wormmon is sleeping, and I know Daisuke would be awfully mad at me if I tried to call him right now and disturb his sleep. Just as well: I can barely read those mockeries of numerals on my desk clock right now from where I'm sitting. I think it may be a few hours past midnight. I woke up to get myself a glass of water because my throat was unusually parched and mouth cotton-filled, and on my way back I paused in front of you. No, I had no reason to stop, other than a self-conscious sort of instinct _everyone _gets when they're passing a reflective surface. Adjusting my pajamas wasn't on my agenda, though. I just had to _look_.  
  
"I think what I saw frightened me, enough to make me sit down, because I still haven't moved from this spot. You can see, can't you? I'm sitting right in front of you, legs tight against an overly thin chest, dark hair framing dark eyes that are so _filled _with something I can't decipher. My glass of water, the original mission's treasure, sits beside me, neglected. I'm a little unkempt at this hour. I apologize.  
  
"As I was saying, you are a rather charming piece of work if I should be able to say so. Who owned you before? How old are you? What's your name? My name is Ichijouji Ken. You don't have to tell me yours, of course; you're my confidant for only tonight. So I remain before you, unwise and undisciplined, perhaps realizing with staunch fear that you are my judge, jury, and executioner. What will my punishment be, I wonder?  
  
". . . Life story? Life story. In my idle hours, I once mused over what kind of person would want to hear my insane memoirs. I discovered that the public gorges themselves on a tragic fallen hero; will absolutely fight tooth and nail to find the next victim who they will suck emotionally dry. They are the true modern vampires. That victim will either spend years in therapy that will do nothing but stress the pocketbook, or years of sleepless nights in which they _want_ to cry . . . but can't. Their ability to has been stolen from them.  
  
"But then again, you're not really a person, are you?  
  
"I am a Chosen -- a pretty, hollow term given to those designated to protect and serve another world parallel to this one called the Digital World. It wasn't that I wanted to be one: it was rather the other way around. Kindness. Kindness is my symbol -- _was _my symbol. I was thought fate was a little ironic at times, but now I believe it's downright cruel when I'm not denying its existence for the sake of remaining sane. My cynicism? It shouldn't be apparent; it's not my place to be so corrosive. I should leave that to someone who deserves the privilege of a flippant tongue. Maybe Daisuke.  
  
"Oh, right. My mind is so cluttered these days. It's been quite some while since my fellow Chosen and I have last had to tangle with the forces of darkness. Time that used to commit to an excruciating crawl now flies by like a crazed whirligig, and a proper estimate of the last event that called upon _all _of us would be nearly a year. I don't attend their school, so since then I've had a year of coincidental and awkward meetings on the street or subway. Without a threat of world destruction looming over our heads, forcing the group to remain as close-knit as possible, the others have finally reverted back to the innate distrust and dislike they always had for me. Daisuke doesn't believe me when I tell him that. He thinks I just don't get out enough. Maybe I don't.  
  
"Motomiya Daisuke -- our once leader and the true hero between us -- is the only who decided to stick by my side after everything was said and done. I am his best friend, so he says frequently, and I have known since our first conversation that he would be mine. But from the outside, our relationship must seem like oil and vinegar. Irony again. Shake us up, add a few specks of this and that, and we blend into a zesty vinaigrette.  
  
"I never particularly cared for the others in the group. My only support came from Motomiya. Ever since the beginning."

* * *

  
_"Ken! Wait up!"  
  
". . . What?"  
  
"Oi, you walk fast."  
  
"Motomiya-kun?"  
  
"Ichijouji, what are you doing?"  
  
". . . I'm walking home from school."  
  
"Do you see that sunset?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"It will be dark by the time you get home."  
  
"I suppose -- I was working later than usual --"  
  
"Join my team, Ken."  
  
"What? But the others . . ."  
  
"I don't want you walking in the dark by yourself anymore."  
  
"You're being awfully metaphorical, Motomiya-kun . . ."  
  
"I know. And call me Daisuke."_

* * *

"And I knew that I was _smiling_, and there was that overwhelming urge to flee like a pheasant caught by surprise in the underbrush he had thought was safe. There was the sickening feeling of something crawling and scratching and slithering under my skin; vague illness overtook me as I continued home that night. I wondered if Daisuke was following me as it became darker. I tripped on a stone in my paranoia. I realized later that feeling was what I now know as 'opening up.' The nighttime hours have never been the same to me since.  
  
"Your face reflects the nighttime to me, precise and accurate. The surface holds not an imperfection of any sort, and regarding the more than dusky conditions, it appears to be an ovular cut of unruffled black velvet. Shadows of nearby objects inside my room are transformed by the eye's trickery; they lurk along the edges, fought into containment by the golden edge. Facing the sliding glass doors to my private balcony, your vortex of self and soul also consumes the stars that lay strewn across the sky outside.  
  
"They . . . look dead.  
  
"Someone has failed to polish the stars, as they do not shine and sparkle . . . but rather pulsate with dulled animalistic need. Light that has traveled for several years from its source's actual position tells a story of struggle. The core is corrupted, rupturing; meltdown is imminent; send one last message to a world populated by people dying by their own hand in hopes someone with glossing jars and faded rags will arrive in time. It's depressing to think that, right now, that star could have already exploded into itself in a savage expression of reality and physics, and we won't know for quite some time.  
  
"Perception lies to us. It takes the sharp scythe of truth and reduces it to this blunted, crooked tool that can only slather warm butter on toast. It can take our heart and dash it on rocks eroded until their tips are like brown skewers; pierce through layers of muscle for the carrion birds to dine upon. It is sick. It is twisted. Maybe I'm losing sight of myself in all of this, but there is the undeniable _fact _of the matter that whatever gave us the right to experience the world also added a lot of fine print. The sum of that underscore is pain. Not a skinned knee, not a mild concussion -- a type of pain to such a degree that ripping your flesh off with a potato peeler and taking a bath in salt water will not match it! And furthermore . . . !  
  
". . . My apologies. I raised my voice at you. That is inexcusable. And I don't want to wake anyone else, do I?  
  
"I have begun to notice that I'm speaking an awful lot. I suppose that's a least better than being laconic, right? You can never draw answers from someone who speaks in riddles or only a certain number of words. Words. That's what all of this is; the entire world corresponds to proper communication between all individuals, regardless of their native tongue. Linguists will spend years learning exotic languages from a thousand different lands, but it always comes back down to whether or not you can ask directions to the nearest bathroom with your hands tucked between your legs.  
  
"Plural, words. Singular, word --_ 'a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.' _ If my memory serves me correctly, that is what your nearest dictionary would condemn you to believing. Speech sounds. But then there are other types of speech. The emotion that flutters past a child's eyes can whisper anything from amazement to disappointment. Two lovers can interact through a simple touch alone. And then even still, a picture is worth a thousand words.  
  
"Maybe I like hearing the sound of my own voice. But when I look at my reflection, it seems that my lips begin to move out of sync with my words like a horribly outdated Godzilla film that has been dubbed away from Japanese. I'm left _hearing _what I'm speaking, just as clear as crystal, but my world turns upside-down and the ghost in the mirror just grins at me maniacally.  
  
"Even there it doesn't stop: fingers that should be mine are mutated into eidolons, lifting on their own despite my brain telling them to_ cease_. With painful acuteness I realize that my fingers really _are _on the floor, and my reflection is lying -- but they're lifting lifting lifting anyway and there's nothing I can do to stop them from reaching toward me from the other side of polished silver. And the simper that my image has adopted only seems to grow in insanity, and eyes are flashing; static lavender without a hint of another shade, anemic and one-tone, and --_ oh God _-- there are dark spikes in my hair. I feel like I'm going to throw up because it's not _Ichijouji Ken _bearing down at me, but the _Digimon Kaiser_ and I just want to know when it will stop; _when will it stop?!_  
  
". . . Shit. I've had to wait a few minutes because I thought I heard my parents getting up to see what my outburst was all about. Wormmon is sleeping like a log, too. He'll probably wake up an hour from now and want to know what's going on.  
  
"But this silence has calmed me, at least to some degree. The figments in the mirror -- on your face -- have melted away, and I'm greeted with the more than haggard young boy that obeys the laws of reality by moving his mouth in accordance to what is really coming out. But there are stars on my cheeks that run like mercury, warm and wet. Lucid salinity that will poison my bloodstream, furthering the question as to whether or not I _am _okay, what with tears marking a trail with shimmery bread-crumbs. I'm unraveling in front of myself.  
  
"But then I wonder if, somehow, there really is another side to you. As my fingers are slowly hoisted, this time carefully and with assurance that my reflection is behaving itself, I almost imagine that your dark flesh is rippling with untold aqueous promises. _'There is another world,'_ you're whispering to me, and I just can't deny this hope that's begun to flutter in my chest. _'No more darkness to swallow you whole.'_ And I'm crying; my vision is blurring; I see it there, I really do . . . everything is opposite on the other side, and so much better.  
  
"My happiness is epitomized there. I can taste the sweet sunshine on my tongue rather than the acridity of oppressive twilight. The constraints of my room are replaced by the openness of a rural field, the sky above a summer's blue as opposed to a winter's black. I can lie there and drink in the glory of the morning sunrise instead of crying with the agony of a bleeding sunset. If I felt it the thing to do, I would chase sleek butterflies through wildflowers painted in every color of the rainbow; no frighteningly impure grayscale. And there would be so many _sensations_ -- those that right now remain faded to me.  
  
"Osamu 'nii-san is with me too. We'll play a game of hide-and-seek or landlocked Marco Polo in a dusk that will never sink any farther into nightfall than just the murky lilac and pumpkin orange skirting the horizon. The endless half-twilight is punctuated by will-o'-the-wisps that bob and weave through the tall stalks of wild grass, bent at varying degrees by the hand of a gentle wind. It's only when we sink down to pursue each other through the thicket of reeds that the glowing specters become more intimate; it's obvious they are fireflies, performing their sacred rituals that mimic flickering candlelight.  
  
"I want your glass to run silver over my hands as I cautiously slide them through to the other side. Like spilled unicorn's blood, it would slip over my skin like thick, fresh paint . . . running down my forearms to where it could drip into the oblivion that leads to my carpeted floor. It would be quicksilver, just that particular element, and I would allow it to engulf me if it only meant some time in that _other_ place.  
  
"However, just as my eyes clear through the perceptible fog, there is the ever-classic liquid rippling on the glassy surface; running up and down the length in dark onyx, upsetting the shadows solidified within. What remained, however mellifluous, has now condensed like the hardening tears of a woman whose heart was broken decades ago as a hopeful, yet deathlike wallflower. My hands strike the outside just then, fingers playing only over the chilled reflection that warbles at the interruption . . . but there is no passing through; no newfound freedom. And I wonder if had I only hurried a few seconds sooner, or if I had waited a few seconds longer, if perhaps my dream-world would have not been so despairingly Alice-in-Wonderland."

* * *__

_"Osamu Onii-san! 'Nii-san! 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san? 'Nii-san?"  
  
"WHAT, Ken?!"  
  
". . . That was funny."  
  
"If you don't answer me . . ."  
  
"Onii-san! . . . What are you dooooooing?"  
  
"I'm stuuuudying, Ken. Now if you'll kindly _leave me alone_, I could get back to that."  
  
"Osamu-san! You said we could go get ice cream!"  
  
"You're a big boy. Go get ice cream by yourself."  
  
"I'm only seven, Onii-san."  
  
"See? That's big. Now let me study --"  
  
"ICHIJOUJI OSAMU, YOU WILL TAKE YOUR BROTHER TO GET SOME ICE-CREAM!!"  
  
". . . Yes, Mama."  
  
"Yay! Come on, 'Nii-san!"  
  
"Just _wait _until we get outside, Ken . . ."  
  
"What did you say, Onii-san . . .?"  
  
"Nothing. Let's go."_

* * *

"Reality is so much harsher, so much colder, and so much sharper. Even if truth is the spear and perception the file, reality is another dimension that will consume you in its irrepressible maws with the promise of a dream inside its stomach. And when all you have are the gastric juices dissolving your bones, you'll understand that as much as your perception lies to you, reality is a much craftier foe.  
  
"But I have a plan.  
  
"It will require some sacrifice, my dear mirror, and you will be my tortured little audience. I believe that maybe I could slice _through_ to my brother and those clarion fields, but only if I was provided with a rather sharp blade. The husk that prevents me may be as hard as a rock, but even the strongest barriers will crumble if provoked in the proper way.  
  
"I don't have one, you say? I do believe that . . . _this_ . . . will constitute as one. It may be a little small -- it's only a penknife. Even so, the edge is wickedly acute and the handle in a metallic gold easily gripped; absolute perfection for school projects that require incising into any lightweight material. I've always kept it in my desk for such that occasion . . . now, I suppose, there is one more task it needs to complete."  
  
". . . Ken-chan?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I thought I heard you . . . why are you still awake?"  
  
"I was just getting a glass of water. I'll go back to bed soon, Wormmon."  
  
"All right."


	3. Thoughts

* * *  
  
**R O R R I M**  
chapter two  
  
_"Some people exist, but never really live."_  
  
* * *

  
And so the exposition is complete.  
  
The ceasing of audible speech is to protect everyone else. I do not know if Wormmon is still listening or not, and there remains -- despite all caution -- the threat of my parental units mobilizing to discover what waking nightmares their precious son may be experiencing. But I would not be able to derive comfort from their tense grasps; answer their questions as to what is wrong; explain the blade I am holding or the warm tears and cold sweat that cause my skin to be repulsively clammy.  
  
In my disability to ease their worries, I fear that any misunderstanding that would result from my voluntary impassiveness would lead to hurt. I have infected too many already to risk that. The resulting silence I have now chosen is only a small price, after all, even when not at wholesale. Each random sound of the night can take my stead in aloud conversation. The additional benefit to myself is fluent prose. Maybe I am easier to understand.  
  
For me, eloquence was never too terribly hard to come by. It was ingrained into you from the moment fabric tinged a frightfully drab German silver touched your vulnerable and so very puerile flesh. It became your personal credo. To lack intellectualism was unheard of for those gifted -- or cursed -- enough to attend the prestigious and so horribly self-righteous private school system founded and residing in the district of Tamachi.  
  
It was not only the teachers who seemed to aid the stripping of innocence and childish mannerisms. Overly studious and sophomoric peers would ridicule any such student who did not "conform" to this premature adulthood.  
  
You learned to fit in quickly. I did.  
  
Tamachi admitted me only because of my brother. Such promise blossomed within him that no one would even think twice about someone so genetically similar _not_ possessing the same immeasurable intelligence quotient as he. The severity of my parents' decision to ship me off to that academy, to dress me in that formal wear, to impress maturity upon me at such a tender age, and to force me to slave over textbook after textbook still lingers inside me.  
  
I was not the same budding rose as all had hoped; with eyes downcast and feelings begrudging they only continued to shell out the currencies required to keep my attendance somewhat welcome. Shameful of my apparent indolence (this was interchangeable with what I like to call "my parents realizing that I was not a genius and entering a passive-aggressive state of denial"), they treated me like I had counterfeited the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  
  
With an invisible _fleur-de-lis _stigmatized to my forehead, my parents avoided me like the plague. Oblivious of my heretical ways in my youth, the poor extent of secular knowledge not having enlightened me to their scorn, I only found vague comfort in the attention my brother gave me. Osamu was always . . . something else. Aloof though he was with his school studies, encounters with him were usually of a memorable virtue.  
  
There were a number of infractions one could commit that would leave them in not his best interests for a long while. The catch was that he never told you what those rules were until you had broken them. The brotherly Russian Roulette was lethal in the Ichijouji household. With no protective parents to be barnacled against, it was a hazard I was willing to take. The good came with the bad.  
  
Maybe I should retract that statement. While my parents may have stranded me in a desert of deliberate negligence, they would sometimes lower their bar of a beau ideal to let me eke back into their lives. This was rarely, and happened on a few conditions. Paying attention to me was always an indirect cause of Osamu; if he had bullied me in our play, had done something to upset me greatly, or was simply not being the role model he should have been, there would be hell to pay. It was all in the name of making my brother look _better_. On top of being the resident genius, he would also be the most kind and courteous little boy you would ever meet in your entire life.  
  
And look at that, neighbor-lady. He even treated his inferior younger brother well.  
  
So with sun-kissed frames beholding translucent lenses for his one and only fault (and even then, becoming nearsighted from eyestrain at a computer monitor was common) and spit-shined patent leather shoes, Tamachi issue, Osamu took all of this in remarkably graceful stride. He tolerated my presence in the beginning, as I was his companion, not an equal per se, but someone he could discuss topics of _normalcy _with. Algebra and Chemistry carried a notable characteristic that segregated them from video games and shounen manga, and I am sure they would have been above my head nonetheless.  
  
The difference between the alpha and the omega of this little fairy-tale is staggering. What originally may have been pleasant began to metamorphose uncontrollably, painting the pastels that toned our familial relationship into monochromatic crimson: the true color of nature. Representing the extremes of the macrocosm, red is actively bipolar. Both love and hate; cruelty and compassion; the gore that predators guzzle from a fresh kill and blood that nourishes an infant in the womb -- these tacit processes are called _life_. They embody it, invigorate it, and provide the catalyst in every earthly decision.  
  
But I digress. Where was I?

* * *

_It resembled a prison. Poles ran parallel to one another, at least half a foot or so apart, made of slippery lead that became biting ice in the winter and scorching flames in the summer. All of these escalated upward; were perfectly perpendicular to the surface they rested upon, where they formed an open-air cage around the entire perimeter.  
  
The roof of the Tamachi T.M. apartment complex was none too glorious to begin with, but became almost depressing with the addition of these bars. Before their appearance, despite the fact no one _ever _came up there, overprotective parents had still worried and complained to the landlord. Since he was liable for a lawsuit if any unfortunate accident was to happen to the children that resided in his building, he had them installed. The parents, satisfied, still forbade their children from ever stepping foot onto the roof.  
  
But someone was up there tonight.  
  
He had resolved it to be a one-time thing. Curiosity while traversing the stairwell from the first-floor laundromat had probed him to journeying higher than the seventh floor, where his home and family resided. Hauling the sack of clean clothes up the five _more _flights would not have been too large a feat, had he been older than seven years. The promise of adventure on the rooftop did not allow him to notice the aching of his shoulder blades.  
  
It was simply _marvelous_.  
  
Leaving his burden by the wayside as soon as he had emerged from the interior of the building, indescribable joy flooded through him at the sight of those dreary bars and tarnished air conditioning and heating units, littering the obscene gravel flooring like broken warhorses. Nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces, the child swept between each at a furious pace; grace was depleted to fuel swiftness, nearly causing him to tumble down a number of times. To him, these battered machines became stony outcroppings, and the farthest wall of metal staves a line of blockades before a Gothic fortress.  
  
It was the fight for the Bastille, reenacted in the overactive mind of a child who had not managed to grasp the importance of the historical event when it was first dictated to him. The fight was just plain cool.  
  
Crying something in butchered French, another subject of schooling that failed to imprint permanently onto his claylike mind, the child breached the last line of defenses triumphantly. A victory dance was performed for unfeeling eyes of steel, and then hands, bare and pale, slipped around two bars, fingers just barely able to touch on the opposite side. The most the space between each pole allowed for was his head; smiling that bleeding smile, pale violet eyes carefully peered over the edge, short clippings of indigo hair light in the cool night's breeze.  
  
The lights twelve stories below were mesmerizing and remote cousins to the stars that twinkled overhead. Biting his lip, the child felt a rather firm tugging at his heart by something he could not identify, tangling up his emotions. Happiness became hesitation and an ugly skepticism he could not comprehend. He began to taste _it_ on his tongue, both sour and pleasing like homemade cherry tarts.  
  
The wind whispered its dare to him. Twelve stories. Violating the trust of his better judgment, he carefully began to lift a petite leg to rest its foot against the cement lip verging the roof. He knew there was an inadequate amount of room to fit his shoulders through, but if he turned them (like turning a mirror horizontally to slip it through the too-short door of a room), he could easily slide past. He was very small and skinny.  
  
The crunch of gravel stopped him. Had he failed to rid the Bastille of all its enemy soldiers? Frowning pensively, he turned his head away from the pretty, hypnotizing lights, and back toward where the sound had come from. His heart lodged in his throat.  
  
Osamu stared stonily at Ken, twenty or so paces from his place on the edge, tempting fate.  
  
It was not until later that the child, Ken, learned of what he had danced with in his heart and savored on the tip of his tongue.  
  
It was his first brush with Death._

* * *

Osamu's entire identity shift was a gradual occurrence. Like a cancerous growth, this bastardization of his personality crept around him like a slow-moving ground fog, taking not too much territory at any one time when spreading its poisonous tendrils further. Too young to understand, I continually blamed his increasingly short fuse on his schoolwork becoming more and more difficult, and the paparazzi and fans that hounded him like rabid dogs. I felt my explanations rational and sensible, and left it at that.  
  
I finally realized things were _Wrong_ the exact moment after he hit me for the first time.  
  
There was no particular day, month, or year -- it did not matter. It simply did not matter. A blur accosted me for a long while, subsequent to the measured hand that had struck me across the cheek with an unforgivable viciousness. I do not quite remember why it had escalated to that pitch, as it was long before my forbidden intrusion into the drawers of his desk. All I can recall is the way my skin stung angrily, and the tears welling in my eyes: why had he done it?  
  
There was no remorse in his gaze, even after the fact -- only chipped pieces of arctic blue ice staring down at me from behind nearly opaque lenses. In his derangement of ire, an empty smile dragged itself across his lips with sickening ease, and Osamu appeared hideously insane. I will never forget that smile -- that _look_ -- for as long as I live.  
  
It was peculiar in that my brother never fully seemed to grasp that he was doing such violent things. When we would fall back into the anonymity of conversations about the newest toy novelty that kept the children of Japan more or less amused (for a week, before they threw it away in favor of the next hottest item), he would treat me as he always had. It was as though I had not been on the floor of our shared room the night prior, dropping tears I wish had been reptilian, and then querying silently to the source of his indignation. Sometimes I think he knew, but did not understand these episodes, and was only trying to fit a square block in a round hole with his futile attempts to return to the familiar settings of sanity with me.  
  
But the damage had been done. My impressionable mind had absorbed all of this, and before long I was starting to become avoidant of my purple-haired Onii-san. Our personal talks began to dwindle. The well of stability was running dry.  
  
Every time I saw him from then on, he was withdrawn into his schoolwork with all but religious zeal. While Osamu may have originally been annoyed if I chanced upon bothering him and breaking one of his unsaid rules, after we stopped talking he would become absolutely ferocious if driven to a certain point. Sarcastic, burning remarks were the first of his arsenal, and then it progressed from there -- more and more bodily harm came to my person for every last time I ever softly asked him if I could borrow something as mundane as a pencil.  
  
I played games with myself, recurrently. I would pretend that my older brother was sound of heart and mind; away from the demanding public and discriminatory parents. In my disillusionment, I would forget the sore imprints of a callous hand on my side, cheek, and back. Osamu was _back_, so delightedly I greeted him, trying to pry him from the infernal textbook knowledge that alienated him more than enriched. But this was a travesty that I paid dearly for in my ignorance. Another welt appeared on my flesh; another night spent crying in the sterile sanctity of the bathroom after he locked me out of the bedroom.  
  
Even in death, my Onii-san was perfection.  
  
His funeral was anything but a gala event, although from the enormity of it, it could have passed as one if given alternative circumstances. Almost every child from Tamachi had been in attendance that day, all the way down to those who had only interacted with Osamu on a level of whispering a respectful salutation to him in the hallway. Tutors, mentors, adoring devotees, members of the media, and even the local post master that handled his fan mail also managed to come and offer condolences to the grieving family._ My _grieving family. The only sound of that bleak procession and church was weeping, ringing off the walls like the low roar of a tortured demon.  
  
Strangely, I shed no tears that day. I do not remember feeling any sort of emotion, nothing more than a growing hole of pure emptiness in the pit of my stomach. There were only _thoughts_ circulating around my brain, crashing and rampaging through any sort of viable sensation that attempted to become known from the heart. It was crushing guilt, dashing anger, slicing sadness, and obliterating the raw shock that had governed my actions since the accident. Even as I carried his portrait with its black lace and caught sight of that one manic smile of darkness directed towards me from the crowd . . . there was nothing.  
  
I was destroyed inside.  
  
There was only the memory being replayed again and again in my mind, fraying more and more, bleached of all sentiment -- a shattering shriek of tires, the look of final innocence, bloody tatters, a lost shoe striking the pavement, and glasses skittering to a stop like a forlorn gold spider near the start of a storm drain.  
  
But there was still no _substance_ to it. It was spun sugar, glistening and pretty and deliciously hollow . . .  
  
Osamu . . . Osamu . . . where is my eloquence now?  
  
I visited the cemetery recently. It must have been no more than a week ago, when the springtime showers were reaching their zenith in the season. It had been raining heavily that morning. The witness to that was the unstable mud and ragged crabgrass that squelched around my shoes as I proceeded through row after row of sepulchral monuments, scanning blearily for the one carved with an ugly, cruel rendition of my brother's once famous name. The sky had given leeway to a shroud of hazel clouds, perpetually in mourning as a steady drizzle continued to berate the auburn and emerald ground. It was impossible to tell where the sun was behind that smoky cloak, although I knew it to be a little while past noon.  
  
I was alone, which was unordinary given that my parents usually joined me for these excursions. This was deliberate. I had not told them where I was going. As I stepped past a statue of a demented angel crying into iron palms, I focused on the gnarled weeping willow tree that stooped low over one particular headstone. Its branches were naturally brittle, bending downward from even the weight gravity and its leaves pressed upon them. Narrow spears of foliage hung lazily from every point possible, nearly turning the tombstone it shielded invisible from detection. Its verdant yielding had begun to wane, despite the actuality of being in its prime -- the tree was dying, losing inches day by day, its soft bark becoming more and more like the rock it dug its twisted roots into for nutrients. It would have been painful to look at had I felt anything.  
  
Thunder rolled across the heavens in a terrible battle cry that turned clouds dark silver, and then announced the downpour of rain where once there was only light mist. Having not brought an umbrella, I was soaked in just under a minute, paused stoically in front of his gravesite. A sunshade, snapped in two at the central pole and with hinged ribs also in pieces, lay nearby where someone had carelessly discarded it, forget-me-not blue fabric filthy in its mud-filled wallow.  
  
The tips of my hair dripped condensed versions of raindrops as I tilted my head down to read his name, date of birth, and date of expiration. He was no older than I was at that very moment when life was whisked away from him. Queerly empty, I only let my deliverance fall soundlessly to the quagmire that permeated across the ground due to the rainfall. The snowy rose gaped at his memorial and my apathetic face, flawless ivory petals quivering in humility and innocence, resisting the deflowering pull of liquid earth.  
  
Inside, I was as cold as the limestone slab that composed the marker erected before me. Burnished marble sculpted my heart and molten gold leaf became its sluggish blood; it also gilded the epitaphic engraving on my brother's tomb, highlighting it in the gloomy atmosphere for passing eyes to see. I do not know how long I was there, standing and thinking random thoughts _(thoughts, thought -- a single act or product of thinking; idea or notion)_ that had no certain focal point.  
  
Something broke inside of me. I fell to my knees, unheeding of the mud and the knowledge my mother would later be furious I had gotten my clothes dirty, hands outstretched to touch the slick gold lettering. Vacuity crashed over me like a wave, and I told _him_, I told the grave I was unable to cast saline over, I told the muddy grass and pearly sky about my plan. It was my Solution; the final decision I had spent many tear-stricken nights with a feather pillow pressed so close to my mouth and nose that it nearly suffocated me.  
  
The rose was completely submerged in sludge by the time I walked away.


	4. Feelings

* * *  
  
**R O R R I M**  
chapter three  
  
_"Where are we going and what are we doing with this handbasket?"_  
  
* * *

Two sets of membranous wings coincide with one another, cooperating for the sake of their wayward little passenger. They are very flimsy, easily broken by only the gentlest external touch, even while coated in chalky armor. The scales that layer the fore wings and their lesser companions dissolve into a fine, barely visible powder when brushing against just about anything. This is unfortunate, because this pseudo-mantle also supplies a mystic property of aerodynamics that allows flight to take place; rubbing it off is usually permanent and flying is never achieved again.  
  
The hemelytra flare abruptly; hence, the little illumination slipping through the plated sliding glass door to the balcony causes opalescence to occur. Flashing flames lick along soft curves, blotting out the imperfections in the coloration of either sleek wing. It's a sterilization that smolders off the irregular brown lines crisscrossing each and purges the remaining sallow gray for the sake of exposing unblemished white. Angling just so, the wings act under the same principles as a hang-glider after the tremulous flitting has ceased. It breaks into a wide arc and glissades through the air, silent and deft.  
  
_. . . tunk._  
  
With a single dead thump, the moth strikes the glass barrier, scrambles for a moment on the frictionless surface, and then effortlessly skulks away.  
  
"That's a gypsy moth, if you're wondering," I whisper to the mirror.  
  
I am surprised by my own coherency. I thought my mind had simply given up on me; just allowing me to believe my surrounding environment as all I want it to be. Have I really been talking, or is that only another gratification from my feverish consciousness? The words had been aural, but rang with a dull tone. A bell struck with fingers benumbing the metal's resonance has the same sort of sound. This proposition makes me ill. My eyes are probing, filled with mute questions and screams, soaking what light befalls me with the hunger of an insatiable blackhole.  
  
_. . . tunk_.  
  
The mirror, my familiar, regards me without prejudice or sympathy. A fellow audience member -- a stowaway -- glints in the upper right-hand corner of the silvery surface, reflected as a miniature star. A brief loathing fills me for that conical masterpiece, scrabbling futilely in search of an escape, probably having been indulging itself on my confessions of past sins in the meantime. Even so, it is mortified by what it has heard . . . caught in a maelstrom of pain, nostalgia, and the encroaching darkness that even milky moonlight can't ward off.  
  
_. . . tunk_.  
  
Working torpidly in my mouth, my tongue feels like bitter moss is growing from it. "_Lymantria dispar _is its scientific name," is murmured to no one in particular this time. My eyes remain fixed on the poor cousin of a butterfly, still clawing with useless limbs at its means of breakout. "It fed only at night as a caterpillar on various types of trees, and as an adult, its one purpose is to breed before it dies. Only the male is capable of true flight, while the female tends to hop along the ground in semblance of a chicken."  
  
Charged with these accusations and denying none, the moth swirls like an impatient comet. It is caught -- _he _I should say, since it's obvious no female could shake the skies -- in this room, breathing this stale air, and hearing the autobiography of a lost boy. I wonder if I could be claustrophobic for a few minutes; I'm staring, staring, _staring _. . .  
  
_. . . tunk_.  
  
Suspicion swells within me and my arms curl around my knees more protectively. I can just imagine how he would announce to the world my fears and dreams, horrors and wishes, and everything else in between. Feathery antennae waving, he would collect the prize for being the one to Crack Ichijouji Ken's Mind Open Like A Melon while I succumbed to the psychologists that would eat my misery like dark fudge and write a million thesis papers. I want to take those pearly wings and rip each one off with precision enough to make the insect _caterwaul_ despite his lack of vocal cords . . .   
  
_. . . tunk_.  
  
"Holy _fuck_," I curse breathlessly, rising upon ungainly legs to stand, "maybe I _am _crazy. _It's_ a moth. A moth that will probably run down to the nearest lamppost bordello and find a few woman mates of its species to copulate with, in hopes of producing offspring before it expires."  
  
The thin knife is suddenly weightless in my hand, but my wrist remains limp as though supporting the load of a hefty cleaver. I stalk to the balcony's door gracelessly, usurping the control webbing shadows had over that slice of dominion. The light from the heavens rings brighter as I wrench the lock open and slide aside the glass on its greased track, fingers on the cold black handle at the far left. The moth, nonplused by the sudden change of air temperature and pressure, hovers fruitlessly by my head.  
  
"Get on with it," I hiss against my own will. The blade flashes as I direct it toward the summer sky like an anxious traffic signal, bathed in silver. What little certainty I have is slipping through my fingers and the moth seems only to contribute to reminding me of that. "Get on with it!"

* * *

_It was so, so easy.  
  
Decisions were usually determined conclusions about something. Audacity was a result of the process, portending to the courageous end of the spectrum where the choice usually meant life and death. It wasn't the breaking of earthly restraints one had when choosing strawberry jam over grape for their lightly toasted bread -- because it was _new _and _exciting _-- after all. It was an entirely novel feeling, bringing pain if inappropriate and pleasure if correct. It's a game on the most base of levels, actuality permitting.  
  
Ichijouji Ken was sick of that game.  
  
That was why it was so easy. He had lost everything to ill-fated selections. (What wire to cut, what wire to cut? Red, green, or blue? You don't have much time.) His brother had been a victim of the dire circumstances that a select uncouth words tumbling from his mouth could produce. He had seen, first hand, just how lovely the unfolding of thick burgundy on dusty asphalt could be, sparkling in the dying sun's light. (Blue, you say? Are you sure? Think hard.) And this was only one example. Ryo was always an enigma -- Akiyama the family name, you know -- to say the least. After that last battle, he just up and deserted the defenseless boy. Ken never forgave himself for that, thinking it to be his fault_. _(Go ahead, my boy, cut it.) Maybe he was right. He was sure he would find no absolution in anything he could say or do ever again. (Oh dear, oh dear, now you've blown us all up, Ken . . .)  
  
Until he discovered the Dark Ocean.  
  
If decision-making was a game, Ken was effectively taking a long break from the big leagues. It was a fair trade, after all. The Ocean promised him wordlessly that he would be able to never have to vitiate the lives of those around him, just as long as he provided one big _favor _to complete the transaction. Thankful but callow, he fell to his knees at the oily waves' edge. As soon as his hand braved the freezing water, it was over. He had taken to the bench.  
  
Ken fell into a deep sleep, stuck precariously in a corner of his mind without regard, and the clearings in his mind were where vengeful darkness was allowed to sow and cultivate. The only indication of this was the soulless pair of anemic mauve eyes. Ken wouldn't have any further choice in what happened from there. He didn't _want _any. That was the beauty of it.  
  
The Digimon Kaiser grimaced, gloved fingers rising to press against his temples.  
  
But now . . . now Ken was waking up.  
  
"Get on with it!" the tyrant barked explicitly at the monitor before him. The gathering of red-eyed Digimon, inky rings brandished around their necks, went unheeding of the harsh order. It must have slipped their master's mind that he had failed to turn on the lines of communications to dictate commands. "What are you waiting for?!"  
  
The group of Tyrannomon snorted at one another appraisingly, squabbling amongst themselves, their subjugated brains so infused with blind hate just waiting to be reaped. They did not even notice the out-of-place formation of ground and aerial Digimon, a human child posted atop each one, however. One obsidian obelisk remained unconcerned nearby.  
  
_**They're not listening._  
_**_  
"Fuck you," the Kaiser muttered, once silky-smooth voice betraying more and more hidden needles. The pounding of his head was making a full length of coherent thought impossible. "Just fuck you. Go away."  
  
_**I can't go away. I'll always be right here. Always always ALWAYS . . .  
  
**_He gritted his teeth, trying to blank out the disembodied voice that tolled with unsophisticated malice. Exhaustion tattered its edges -- it was limited victory._**  
  
**_"We had a fucking DEAL! We --"  
  
"Ken-chan? Whom are you talking to?"  
  
"Don't call me that, you feeble slug," he snapped waspishly, denoting that he had been washed mercifully with white noise upon Wormmon's first words. "I'll always be Master to you."  
  
But now . . . now Ken was getting angrier.  
  
"All right, Ken-chan."  
  
". . . What do you want, anyway?"  
  
"The Tyrannomon were freed by the Chosen. But the Mecha Norimon you sent to collect the rogue Kuwagamon in sector five succeeded while they were busy."  
  
"Good," the despot replied, digits dancing over the manifested keyboard of various glyphs imprinted in ruby. The susurration was calming. The twine of his nerves began to slowly come back together. On the screen, the hacked bits and pieces of various Digimon slowly began to take shape. Arms with terrible ruddy pinchers joined in the fray. It was almost complete. Chimeramon was almost complete . . . "Wormmon. Go outside and await further instructions."  
  
It would be unstoppable. And he would be God.  
  
. . . He ignored the ice water that began seeping through his veins, breathing arctic fire on his nerves.  
  
But now . . . now Ken was getting stronger._

* * *

  
I bite absently at my lower lip in concentration and hesitance, infrequent as the habit may be. The gypsy moth has since disappeared into the pitch night, liberty detected, and that had been help to providing a temporal satisfaction. Now the door is shut, chilly against my back as I observe the interior of my room, discreetly keeping purpure eyes from the cheval glass that stands opposite of me. My gaze wanders to the bed on a whim, rumpled sheets a telltale corpse of rhapsodical nightmares; twisted about a band of deep viridian I can identify as Wormmon. I could easily put the cap on the penknife, climb into my bed, and forget all of this ever happened.  
  
I sit down in front of the mirror again.  
  
_I'm a mess._  
  
A few fingers lift, albino in contrast to the surrounding abyss, and press gingerly through what knots I have acquired in my sapphire hair since having lain down in the earlier nighttime hours. Waking from suppositious demons is like eating copper; my blankets are in a death grip and my hair so matted and tangled from invisible tussles that it is a mockery to graves on which deserve a snowy rose. Then my heart calms; I truly know I'm still trapped, even without spidery cinnabar arms or squealing tires to imprison me. There's a cage of glass all around me, tiled mosaically in a mismatched rainbow: a cage of memories.  
  
Ah. "Here is my room," I say tenderly, gaze quavering to the left and right, "with its tarnished curios and fripperies masquerading for deep-seated currents of emotion."  
  
I've always been backed into corners: my parents, my brother, my school . . . _Kaiser_ . . .  
  
It was halcyon in a way unimaginable. Heaven and hell a notch above and below; it was the gap in the circuit, the misfire in the synapses, the endless space between the stars . . . the Dark Ocean, Purgatory, or any of a million designations. A quaint island in an infinite expanse of reasonably placid ashen waters was the only destination for those who found their way there; the population long since fled. The rotting fishing village, as silent as the tomb, was left in their wake, whitewashed and faded like an old photograph. Light diffused through the thickly overcast sky and hung incandescently. The intense heat was drawn to the sea itself, dangerously hypothermic, where the residual hum of a fog-shrouded whirlpool could be heard as the elements of air and water merged. Seven stone towers, their functions anonymous, rose from sylvan ebony that covered the remainder of the isle. Malevolently eroded crags jutted from the base of charred cliffs, whereupon a skeletal lighthouse sputtered decaying warnings to ships that would never come.  
  
It was peace. It was Death. It was . . . quiet.  
  
"And here is my window," I drawl, using a steady hand and the edge of my blade to graze aside what untamed bangs wish to veil my eyesight, staring a few heartbeats at the very tip when it's _right there _in front of my pupil, "glass polished and blinds up . . ."  
  
The waters had their voices of crucified whispers, all on a wretched forked tongue. It felt like dry ice had replaced my heart, but I knew the bliss of journeying into the arms of Morpheus. No longer would I destroy contentment.  
  
My memories are still pockmarked, even to this day -- an involuntary denial that gives me only small tracts about the Kaiser: his thoughts, his plans, the Digital World, and the Chosen he fought against. Little by little, a new awareness will surface, usually as soon as I awake in the morning. But there is the fresh pain as well: what I dealt him with psychic talons once the subconscious I was planted in began to activate. I was shredding him, but still drifting in and out of conversance depending on his deeds at any one time. The more malicious he was, the more conscious I became.  
  
My fingers begin trembling. I quickly lower the slender knife, wishing not to carve out my eye-sockets by mischance alone. I need to take a breath, watching as my muscles flounder wildly. "My door is here, decked in filigree, reflecting a shattered soul without bias," I rasp, unable to find my voice adequately. "What a joke."  
  
The _coup de maitre _was his digital mythos, this I recall clearly, the unruly pet where no proper spanking or dark spiral could remedy it of its spoiled behavior. I think Chimeramon hated him for bringing about Life as much as I did in general. It must have had such an agonizing existence, mentality unglued and fractured into a dozen pieces. Viral, vaccine, data . . . it was a living paradox and Frankensteinian conundrum.  
  
I clear my throat. "Constantly feeling that you're a mistake is jading," I voice, unsure why I simply can't leave well enough alone and keep it circulating over and over and over in the privacy of my brain. "It makes reality feel not quite stable, even to an ineludible degree unreal, and in this abandonment you can't tell between truth and falsity. Life is muted, decolorized and hushed, and sometimes you . . . I . . . just want to _feel _again."  
  
There are plenty of ways to do that. Solace is offered in various figments by the mind, ideas and theories that fuse together into a monstrosity that can at least make the_ day _more vivid in all saneness of the word. When . . . when Daisuke drew his hand back and squarely cracked me across the face . . . there was that split-second image of Osamu at a time when I did feel _alive_; when walking out into the street held more meaning to me other than a book-learned definition for road, sky, automobile, and sidewalk. The pain was crisp in both scenarios, and while I relished in the resulting bruise, the siring of my obsession was well underway.  
  
Blood was out of the question. My entire wardrobe didn't consist of long sleeves; coupled with that was the considerate horror such self-inflicted injuries usually produced, even upon the bearer themselves. I had seen enough shedding of claret and unhealed scars to ever even _consider _the possibility of pressing a biting knife to myself. There were still alternatives.  
  
". . . And this is my key." The blade sparks with movement.  
  
It was a fluke that I came across my current method. Osamu's portrait, still disheartening with the addition of a dedicatory ribbon, was on the mantelpiece before I transferred it into my bedroom. There was always a small shrine of tea-candles there, lavender and lily, kept lit in his memory by both my parents and me. It was an unsaid tradition; the roots lost. It was by error that I tipped one when snuffing its wick before bed, another rite, and my fingers were doused in liquefied wax. It _hurt _-- as to a flame it burned -- mightily, but it was to my relief then that this liquid fire dried almost instantly after contact with my skin. There was no scathe left aside from a slight rose discoloration from the predictable agitation it brought.  
  
The feeling dallied with me, the euphoria of pain that made everything genuine again. By "mishap" this occurred several times more, no more daring than to subject my hands to this treatment . . . and then it became a permanent fixture in my life. Like an addict, I would steal into my room with a multicolored package from the store and a matchbook to experiment with other patches of naked skin. My parents, happy that I seemed to be doing better, remained oblivious. They thought my seclusion was for the best.  
  
As though inciting a chemical high, it was this that I turned to when I couldn't _deal_. Nothing has changed, even now, where in my desk there sit pink, hazel, and olive medallions of wax . . .  
  
But sometimes . . . sometimes . . . when I'm near Daisuke, I feel the same elation that makes the sanguine world choke and crumble without placing self-infliction into the equation. My heart thuds loudly. I wonder if he feels the same at this very moment, adopting an out-of-place rhythm that aches keenly in his chest, even while tucked safely away in his bed as I should be and not facing wraiths in the mirror.  
  
And then there's my partner . . . Wormmon . . .

* * *

_He felt dead inside.  
  
It wasn't even an emptiness that gave him a void of emotion; that at least would have been marginally better than the lead and silver that made him feel cumbersome and cadaverous. Embalming fluid may as well have coursed through his body, shutting down each one of his internal organs, and caking his arteries with a preserving compound of solvents, because he believed himself to be a zombie. Something was missing. Or had it always been?  
  
He was mindless of the sand that kicked up around him, lashing him with limitless amounts of razor-edged diamond dust. Mostly numb from all outside input, there was only the shambling of tired legs and scream of the sun's light in his eyes, but even that became obsolete with each passing cycle of leg after leg of the aimless wandering. A desert -- he was in a desert. Hadn't he been here before? Laughing azure eyes met him, foreign and familiar at the same time, before they quickly shifted hues into concerned sienna of apprehension and concern. He_ had_ been here. It was where . . . with him and . . . he couldn't remember. He _could not _access his memories.  
  
Panic flooded him, but it seemed unattached. Wrathful cid had gnawed on the ties to all sentiment; the bond was severed. What was his name? Did he know that at least? Yes . . . Ichijouji Ken. And he was missing . . . a piece of himself.  
  
_Oh . . .  
  
Oh no.  
  
Oh fuck.  
  
Wormmon?  
  
Wormmon!  
  
_That was it. Wormmon. Where was he? The desert . . . on his knees, crying tears of butchery into the crocus sands once the lamb had departed in a nauseating, fragmented evaporation. Wormmon -- the leavings of his soul gone on the wind as pixels. Wait -- no. That was before, when a semicircle of others was present, pitiless eyes mocking him (save for one). The second (third?) time around, there was no one to yell for his reconsideration of . . . of . . ._ _a team, yes, joining a team. But he wasn't one of anything -- he couldn't be. He was alone; he'd always be alone . . .  
  
His feet stumbled on the fringe of arid grasses, native to the region. Regaining his balance, glassy eyes lidded and moisture-deprived lips cracked, Ken noted dimly that he had entered some sort of pastel-colored hamlet. There was a prick of confusion at the sight of eggs, decorated in various designs and colors as though for holiday.  
  
"This is the Primary Village!" someone declared nearby, proud and informative. Ken saw that it was a Fresh Digimon, but was unable to place a name to it.  
  
He was distantly amazed that he was capable of speaking. "Primary Village?"  
  
"That's right! This is the place where all Digimon are reborn and --"  
  
The rest of the babble was instantaneously overshadowed by that one word. Reborn? Digimon had a form of resurrection . . . ?_  
_  
_Wormmon!_  
  
"Reborn?" He paused. Alien hope crept towards the cinders of his emotions, making his heart give one slumberous beat and sending shivers down his spine. "Wormmon too?"  
  
"That's right!" the Digimon -- Poyomon, Ken realized suddenly -- agreed a second time, nearly bouncing sporadically from its private cradle. "Digimon never die! They just get reconfigured!"  
  
Another pump of the fist-sized muscle brought _pain_, but it was pain that made him feel as though he had joined the ranks of the living once more. His indifference was replaced by indescribable _joy_ and the kindling of a smile was made apparent. He had his redemption -- it was _right there_ -- and he was going to claim it.  
  
But . . . Wormmon -- where was he? All of the eggs, disorienting in their randomness, and his mind yielded no knowledge of the particular pattern . . .  
  
"You're the Digimon Kaiser!" a fellow Fresh form called Yuramon disgorged, voice condescending.  
  
_What? I'm not -- oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no why hadn't I stopped it sooner why was I sleeping I'm a coward and oh no oh no WORMMON! The pain; I've brought you so much of it and everything else because I couldn't STOP IT in time and I'm so sorry because I know that there's no forgiveness and there's just blood staining my hands and I want to die but I'm alive again and I -- the blood! _Why is it still there?!  
  
Everything was hideously wrong. A low moan escaped Ken's throat: the maroon liquid that spattered from his claw-like hands with as much regularity as his salty-tasting tears would not cease. It sluiced in a mortifying vibrancy, staining the peridot ground alongside less lethal salinity, accompanied by the onslaught of frightening wisdom. It dictated the phantasmal, metaphorical sight of red on one's hands was not to take on a realism such as this, to taint the ground like so, and that his wrists should not be stinging so badly and --  
  
_My wrists! It's -- it's coming from _my wrists_?!

* * *

I heave raucously, as if I haven't taken a breath in the past few minutes. Disorientation ties my stomach into a tight, throbbing knot of gastric discomfort and spite. That was . . . different. My lapses into my memories, aroused by stimuli that don't necessarily make sense, have never taken on a substitute ending of such a magnitude. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the culprit to blame, howbeit.  
  
Then I look down.  
  
. . . The bottom of my stomach drops out.  
  
I must have unconsciously placed it there during my declension of thought. The blade of the penknife is bisecting my right wrist, stainless steel overexposed and blinding. My lucent, paper-like skin almost glows with an inner radiance that exposes every last bone, tendon, and circulatory vessel. A vein of austere peacock ore winds through the white clay. I know that if I apply just the right amount of pressure, I could free the deoxygenated blood of its perpetual cycle -- and what the_ hell_ am I thinking?!  
  
I hurl the penknife as hard as I can away from me. A chasm opens in the umbra beyond my sight-range, engulfing it whole. Abhorrence occludes everything.  
  
_(Feelings, feeling -- the general state of consciousness considered independently of particular sensations, thoughts, etc.)_  
  
My plan . . . countless nights spent . . . told 'Nii-san that . . . I -- I was going to . . . to . . . with a knife and . . . I'd meet him soon . . .  
  
Ruined, I bury my face in my shaking hands and sob loudly, bitterly.  
  
My tears are hot like melted candle wax.


	5. Love

* * *  
  
**R O R R I M**  
chapter four  
  
_"Enjoy life today. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow may never come."_  
  
* * *

  
I've never seen him look so sad.  
  
I don't know if I'm grateful or disturbed. His penchant for icy gazes appears to have waned; the formerly omnipresent glacial quality of his eyes is missing, as though broken away by a warm tidal flow. The now unhampered topaz, clear like a diamond and still capable of being just as splitting, is alarmingly incongruous to what my reeling mind can recall. The malignancy is gone. There is something more _human_ now.  
  
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.  
  
I'm not even surprised he's here. His tension is apparent with the shell of cold gloss stripped crudely away; like it's a mistake, that he shouldn't be here, and . . . well. My shoulders are given a squeeze, crooked though they may be in the awkward position I'm sitting in. I am back against my haunches, knees bent inward and weight tilting towards one, and my head craned to the side and back to look up the length of clothed arm to his face. I probably look like hell. The tears are incidental now. I've lamented enough.  
  
He is all together morose in the colors he's donning: a beryl sweater and pair of blue jeans dark enough to be considered midnight if minded improperly. The wool of his cuffs brushes against my neck, where my raven hair had been pushed behind my ear at some point in our silent contemplation of one another. His smile is melancholy. He feels he has been late for something; the disquiet on his face is as readable as a book; he has always been so _punctual _in his exploits. He reminds me of the White Rabbit, forever obsessing over his pocket-watch and its Victorian hands. His disappointment in himself is dense.  
  
I want to tell him it's okay; I'm okay. But I can't seem to find the words.  
  
I don't remember him ever crying before. He is now, and I can't help but marvel at that fact:_But whom are you crying for? Yourself? . . . Or is it I too now?_  
  
The alarm clock rings, irritatingly bright and cheerful. Predawn stretches zirconium fingers across the sable horizon in a slaughter of night and proud heralding of sunrise, edges vaguely pink. The silver-footed queen, whose nocturnal post had been so high, flees toward the west, yowling vengeful curses that she would return in a day's breadth. Their dance carries on, unbeknownst to most of the populace who lay unaffected in their beds at this ungodly hour.  
  
I open my eyes after enough screaming insistence; the ceiling -- a sparse number of feet away from where I lay on my elevated mattress (only accessible by the ladder that is propped nearby) -- gives salutations in unmoving floral-white plaster and paint. My hand slides out from beneath the downy comforter and searches half-blind along the adjacent ledge. The bells stop their head-splitting cacophony once the offending machine is turned off.  
  
I roll onto my side, bleary-eyed, searching for the much easier to read neon numbers that my desk clock bares lambently in spite of the darkness. Five o'clock (AM, of course). My slipshod morning condition makes seeing difficult for a while; sometimes I wonder if there are glasses specially designed to tackle this problem. I gurgle something incoherently and return to where I had been, flat on my back. My eyes slip shut, as I'm still half-asleep and in that zone where dreams can so smoothly overtake you again.  
  
"KEN-CHA~AAAN!!"  
  
It's a lot harder to accomplish when Wormmon plops square on your chest.  
  
"I'm awake," I profess, trying to shake him from his perch. "You saw to that."  
  
Copper trickles down the back of my throat. Only a little. My dreams had evaporated upon waking.  
  
"I just had to make sure you were awake!" he giggles, hyper and spontaneous in the barely lit hours even when not the overly energetic Minomon. A green feeler taps against my cheek in an obscure form of affection.  
  
I smile. "Thank you. I'll get up now."  
  
The bathroom floor tiles are always very cold. My smoke-gray uniform is immaculately pressed (as always), the pyrite clasp and rows of cufflinks polished (as always), and smells of lemons and sunshine due to the fabric softener my mother uses (this, too, as always). My socks and shoes, the latter having been shined the millionth time by a compulsive hand, reside by the front door; the slippers I usually wear are being laundered. The ceramic chill is unfamiliar to me. Feeling queasy, I settle my weight on my toes and lift upwards to reduce the contact. The edge of the sink, similarly cool but bearable because of my clothes, dents the fabric at my waist as I lever against it. My hands open the medicine chest in front of me.  
  
I still don't know when the entire practice started. The foundation was a definite result of dun half-moons I would find under my eyes, no matter how much or how often I slept. Annoyed at my own vanity, I still resorted to using various powders and tinted creams thieved from my mother's collection to try to conceal the ugly marks. It was after I found a satisfactory combination of products that I began to buy my own. After that, amidst all of the secrecy this invoked, I dappled with other angles of beautifying myself. No -- not beautifying exactly -- but something to make me . . . well . . . I don't know.  
  
I take out a dark-colored tube no larger than a thin ballpoint pen and unscrew the cap, meanwhile closing the cabinet with a knock of my elbow. Liquid eyeliner is a challenge. It feels like aqueous satin and has the consistency of thick ink. It will be runny if you're not wary; however, the glossy quality is amazing after accurate application with the minute wand, which broadens the lash lines (when not producing a "raccoon" effect) and defines every curve. Its most useful operation is to give the eyes that inexplicable theatrical flare, drawing attention to them well. It distinguishes the face as the most unique part of the human body, as it really is. I like the dramatic look it gives me. Daisuke just thinks I look like a girl.  
  
"A girl?" I ask, turning my head.  
  
We make a ritual out of meeting after school each day, something sacred and hollow; our anger at one another for missing an appointment due to miscommunication of when and where is always incredibly stellar. As of the past week, I had spent at least five of those days standing by the roseate brick walls that encircle the school-grounds at Odaiba, whiling away at least an hour or more while he suffered through a browbeating detention for any menagerie of offenses.  
  
I was bothered only with some regularity by die-hard fans that remember, in their words, when I was "more untouchable." I nodded and smiled mindlessly, eyes trained to the chalk graffiti of a green elephant, unable to discern more than a pair of dead eyes and string of victories (chess, Judo, soccer) as I thought back. Praying, hoping, even demanding wordlessly that the teachers release him a tad early ensued.  
  
Today is different. He's had to wait for me at the discordance of asphalt and iron that together form the gates to Tamachi for more than an hour himself. I think he's worried about me. The words "Ichijouji Ken" and "detention" are evidently not synonymous with one another. He didn't ask why I had been served the punishment, and I didn't tell him. I know he'd only fret more. My lack of elaboration doesn't faze him.  
  
"Yeah," Daisuke replies, regarding me in jest, "really feminine and stuff. That sort of thing."  
  
His eyes are toasted ovals of cinnamon bread, spread with a citrine jam that turns the crusts into gold. The sun gives a wounded cry; the influx of sunlight is hinted with a bloody mandarin orange. I hear the hum of passing cars somewhere behind me, but it's curiously far-off at the same time. The present is here; now. My gaze darts to the movement of his shoulders, rolling upwards in his joking nonchalance. I'm infatuated with the rippling of his clothes.  
  
We strangely haven't gone anywhere yet. Nine times out of ten Daisuke will have after-school plans for us, with or without my consent -- an impromptu game of soccer on the school field that usually results in us getting caught and seeing how fast we can run, or even stopping by the nearest ice cream parlor for an unhealthy treat prior to dinner. ("No one has to know, Ichijouji," Daisuke explains, rolling his eyes at me. They're full of laughter. "So stop whining and eat your ice cream before I do.") He hasn't offered us any outlet. I notice there are no elephants drawn near our feet.  
  
"Well," I murmur, inconspicuously exchanging hands with the Tamachi issue briefcase I'm holding. It serves as our backpacks; makes us look more professional. We're almost adults, after all, at the ripe old age of thirteen or fourteen. "I think it looks . . . nice." I couldn't condone saying _dramatic_. I thought Daisuke would laugh at me.  
  
He grins somewhat bemusedly, eyes twinkling with warm mirth. In this moment I know he wouldn't have laughed at me had I confessed I fantasized about being a pretty-pretty pony princess. I feel flushed. If I am, Daisuke elects not to say anything about it.  
  
"Come on, Ken," he chides, turning on a heel in the direction of the street. I follow automatically, observing his unrepeatable profile of auburn spikes for as long as he faces me sideways. I will always have sharp regret for never learning how to draw, as word-oriented as I am, because he would be the perfect bronze specimen for my pencils and paints. He begins across when it's clear, calling back to me. "You're going to call your mother!"  
  
A hideous squeal of tires assaults our ears.  
  
"Are you psychic, Daisuke-kun?"  
  
He never saw that van coming.  
  
Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it. It's a lesson everyone learns outside of the classroom about getting through school intact and moderately unhurt. Survival skills are essential in this jungle of impersonal faculty and a student-body that would only step over you (or on you, if they were feeling hateful enough) if they found you frantically trying to collect dropped assignments in the middle of the hall. I've never met anyone who ever bothered to stop and help out those in distress -- the hostile stares from everyone else they receive in turn is enough to send them scuttling on -- aside from myself, as I feel impervious to their judgment now.  
  
While laughter may be easiest to throw off . . . whispers are not. Half-cloaked in airy tones that can easily be mistaken as the ruffling of a breeze by your ear, you're never wholly sure of what they're saying, even if immediately deciding it's derogatory. It's frustrating.  
  
"Have you heard . . ." someone breathes into his best friend's ear in the locker room. I'm changing out of my soccer practice attire -- a lot of hard work and concentration has gone into assuring that the skills obtained while I wasn't myself are still exemplar. I am team captain. I write the playbooks. I pull the jersey upward, seeing only terre verte material as I listen to their damning words. ". . . Ichijouji-kun . . . yes, ever since he got back. He has been hanging around that guy from the Odaiba team. A lot."  
  
"I did not think he was . . ." his companion whispers into his hands.  
  
My uniform top slaps wetly on the bench, soaked in sweat from the impossibly harsh training schedule I've had my team on. We have our practices before the school day. It's cold in the locker room, just as it was in my bathroom this morning.  
  
The eyeliner is waterproof. Only a combination of soap and water can have it effectively cleansed from the skin. Even then, its richness usually attributes to how it can _almost_, but not quite, stain your eyelids. Vigorous scrubbing is required. It hurts, but it's worth it.  
  
I lower back down onto my feet, revolted at the chillsome floor, and go to search out my soccer uniform. I have soccer practice today, before school. Getting up at five in the morning is the latest anyone can sleep if they want to make it on time.  
  
"KEN-CHA~AAAN!!"  
  
It's a lot harder to accomplish when Wormmon plops square on your chest.  
  
"I'm awake," I profess, trying to shake him from his perch. "You saw to that."  
  
Copper trickles down the back of my throat. Only a little. My dreams had evaporated upon waking.  
  
"I just had to make sure you were awake!" he giggles, hyper and spontaneous in the barely lit hours even when not the overly energetic Minomon. A green feeler taps against my cheek in an obscure form of affection.  
  
Something doesn't click right. "Didn't you say that to me already?"  
  
I brush a fringe of hair from my eyes after we make it to the other side of the street together. The moon, grinning silver, lances another blow off of the already crippled sun. More definitive spatters of vermilion snakes over us in abnormally spaced bands while we continue down the sidewalk. I don't know where we're going, but I've never questioned Daisuke's leadership abilities, now have I?  
  
"Are you psychic, Daisuke-kun?"  
  
"Maybe. But I want you to have dinner at my house tonight." He smiles at me. I tentatively return the expression, feeling that I would awkwardly shuffle my feet and blush like an ignorant schoolgirl if we weren't still moving. "You'll call your mother to make sure it's all right."  
  
"Of course," I reply, and the world is real again.  
  
I hear low snickering as I sit, reaching down to unlace and take off my grass-stained cleats. This must be their revenge. These two particular acquaintances on the team I had been especially verbose with concerning their tardiness. They had neglected to come for a lot of the starting warm-up and drills. I suppose they can't take reprimands very well. I also forced them to stay for an extra twenty minutes. Everyone else has already left.  
  
"Has he ever looked at _you _in the showers?" he grunts peevishly. I must have missed something. I pause, one of my shoes resting in my hand. "Jesus, Hiroshi . . ."  
  
Yes, sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.  
  
"Isn't this magnificent, Ken?" my mother titters, standing back a few feet so she can survey just how splendidly I look with the antique_ objet d' art_ by my side. I swivel in my computer chair, regarding her rather distrustfully. What use would I have for another mirror? The one in the bathroom is fine. "I bought it at this strange little thrift shop in the city, and I just _knew _it could liven up your room."  
  
I only smile complacently, thoughts drifting back to where I had just been. The school night ruined it. We have sleepovers often enough, even when . . . well, regardless, I don't need her "livening up" my life (thank-you-very-much). Looking toward the mirror, its surface catches the light just so, and winks. I feel unnerved.  
  
"A shooting star! Look!"  
  
I bolt awake violently. I'm lucky I remember to duck my head when I sit up, as otherwise I would have ended up with a rather nasty scrape to my scalp. My cloud-white duvet is wreathed around my waist and legs tightly. There had been a considerable struggle with invisible demons, and the rancid taste of my mouth gives evidence to that. A trembling hand lifts, using the linen of my sleeve to wipe the gelid sweat from my forehead and cheeks.  
  
It tastes like I have a mouthful of copper ball bearings stuffed in my cheeks, melting together into one large sphere that will reside there until I muster enough fortitude to swallow. Copper always reminded me of blood.  
  
Arching a svelte brow, I pass Daisuke a side-glance before returning my eyes to the starry night sky. The disintegration of the cosmic chunk of debris was swift and entirely too ephemeral. I smile knowingly, having caught sight of my hopeful friend squeezing his eyes shut and crossing his fingers, making that unsaid wish for all the universe to take into its heart. I don't tack my desires onto the tail of transient stars. I'm afraid they'll come true.  
  
"You know, Daisuke," I recite softly, feeling that all suffixes are unnecessary while we're truly alone. This section of the park is wonderfully excluded in the first stripes of the coming night, a spot we discovered after fitful wandering here following dinner with his family. We have school tomorrow, so we can't stay out forever.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
We're sitting next to each other, admiring how visible the wild yonder can be even in the middle of a horrendously refulgent city, outstretched legs straying close enough to touch one another. I lick my lips before speaking: "Some people believe shooting stars denote sadness and grief."  
  
His good-natured grin fades. I feel horribly guilty. His voice is quiet when he speaks: "Do you believe that, Ken?"  
  
"I wonder if he has fucked that guy . . ."  
  
They never stood a chance. I still don't know what happened exactly. Something snapped in me, like all of my insides had been a tightly wound spring, and their little guffawing assumptions just kept _twisting _and _twisting _it around. When it broke, I didn't have any sort of control over myself until it was too late. I frighten myself a lot, anymore. There are just moments when I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have resisted the therapy and lithium.  
  
I place a hand abruptly on the ground beside me, taken from its post of lying parallel to my leg. I use it to steady myself, watching the world tumble around me crazily. Where am I? What time is it? I . . . oh, crickets in the background, and the victorious pale cornsilk moon dancing across the sky. The park. And Daisuke . . . he's looking at me, anxious: "Are you all right?"  
  
"Something's broken," I whisper, feeling more ill.  
  
I don't employ my fancy self-defense martial artwork on them. They don't deserve to only come out with homely bruises that will teach them better than to say such rude and prejudice things. The janitors are the first to find me with them, and they go to get more robust attendants to haul me off when they can't stop me. I scream the entire time, a high-pitched keen that just tears their hurtful laughter apart while I bash them repeatedly with the spiked flat of the shoe I have just taken off.  
  
I know I left one of them unconscious, bearing a concussion I'm sure was the result of when I threw him into the row of cerulean lockers. The other boy, his name I can't extract right now, is left with a split lip, broken nose, and plenty of bloody puncture holes.  
  
I only receive a detention, although the principal is furious. He says, "We will discuss the matter of expulsion with you later!" I want to tell him to fuck off. I really do.  
  
His good-natured grin fades. I feel horribly guilty. His voice is quiet when he speaks: "Do you believe that, Ken?"  
  
Hadn't I already been here? My memories . . . they've all blended together.  
  
I watch Daisuke's face for a moment more. "I don't know," I offer honestly, tilting my head back to take in the dark tapestry with its crystalline studs. A breeze toys coltishly with a few longer tendrils of navy blue that had been intruding my eyesight.  
  
There's warmth on my cheek. My eyes widen, and I level my chin with the slightest turn of my neck to look back towards my stargazing colleague. His fingers, tanned and healthy-looking, clash greatly with my own blanch skin; they rest near my mouth comfortably, his eyes burning with an emotion so vivid and denuded that it scares me.  
  
"You don't have to be sad any longer," Daisuke clarifies for only my ears, shifting a little on the moist grass that blankets the ground. He looks beautiful. "I'll always be here for you. And I think your eyeliner makes you look pretty, too."  
  
_(Love -- strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; affection and tenderness felt by lovers.)_  
  
I begin to cry when he touches his lips to mine, and my arms fasten themselves around his waist. I finally know absolute completion.  
  
I go to sleep thinking of Daisuke and his kiss with its silent promises. The new mirror says nothing to me, and merely keeps watch from its post opposite of my private terrace. And that's when I dream:  
  
"I can't believe I have to take you to get ice cream," Osamu grumbles, pulling his sweater around himself tighter in his vexation. He shoots a glare to my obliviously happy face, the ice in his eyes making a rather fearsome comeback. "I'd rather be studying."  
  
I crane my head back, taking in the list of frozen flavors that had been posted by the roadside confectionary stand we're visiting right now. There's vanilla (too plain!), mint (too weird!), rainbow sherbet (too colorful!), strawberry (too fruity!), almond (too nutty!), butterscotch (too sticky!), and . . .  
  
"CHOCOLATE!" I blazon at last, tugging at my brother's hanging arm. "I want chocolate!"  
  
Osamu stares at me for a moment, before a rather insidious smirk crosses his pale lips. "Too bad. You're getting vanilla," he rectifies, using the limb I'm riveted onto to knock me back a number of feet carelessly.  
  
"No!" I yell, stomping my foot. "You never listen to me! I want chocolate! Chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate --"  
  
"SHUT UP!"  
  
I find myself on the ground, ankle almost sprained from its rather painful position underneath the rest of my body. The vendor, pitying but unable to really help anything, just decides to move on. While I gape at my brother hatefully, tears well in my eyes, large and globular. They drop like shiny beads down my face, tasting metallic at the corners of my mouth. My scorn throbs like the hand imprint on my face where he had so mordantly struck me down.  
  
"Why can't you be like other big brothers?!" I wail, scrambling uselessly at the few pebbles that I just want to _hurtle _at him. "They're always nice to their little brothers! And they take them to do stuff! You always have to study, and when you're not studying, you're _hurting _me! Huh? Huh?! I . . . I hate you!"  
  
He looks stunned. The frost in his vision falters, but I'm realizing all of this just too little, too late. He bends down to me, reaching out a hand with caution, as if he is about to touch a battered animal. "Ken-chan . . . I'm sorry . . ."  
  
_No, he's not. Say it. You say it at night, when you're crying into your pillow._  
_  
_What? No, I can't . . . not again . . ._  
  
You say it while you're hiding in the shower stall, when your parents just don't care.  
  
_It's not his fault! There's something wrong with him! I've realized that!  
_  
And now, look at you, about to let him just do it all over again . . .  
  
_I . . . I can't . . . it could be different this time . . .  
  
_Really? You know it can't be. But you still have the power to make everything better, at least for a little while. You can't deny that, because you wish . . . you _wish _. . .  
  
_"I WISH YOU WOULD JUST _DISAPPEAR_!"  
  
Osamu recoils instantly, straightening up as though called to attention. He looks at me indifferently while I continue to cry, more so from my own shame of saying something so cutting to my elder brother. I stand shakily, small hands clenched into fists as I almost choke on my own self-loathing. I barely hear him when he addresses me.  
  
"All right, Ken. I will." He steps back into the street while I'm looking down toward the chipped concrete.  
  
A hideous squeal of tires assaults our ears.  
  
My head snaps up, eyes as wide as tea saucers. Osamu! _Osamu!!  
  
_Osamu . . .  
  
He never saw that van coming.  
  
I bolt awake violently. I'm lucky I remember to duck my head when I sit up, as otherwise I would have ended up with a rather nasty scrape to my scalp. My cloud-white duvet is wreathed around my waist and legs tightly. There had been a considerable struggle with invisible demons, and the rancid taste of my mouth gives evidence to that. A trembling hand lifts, using the linen of my sleeve to wipe the gelid sweat from my forehead and cheeks.  
  
It tastes like I have a mouthful of copper ball bearings stuffed in my cheeks, melting together into one large sphere that will reside there until I muster enough fortitude to swallow. Copper always reminded me of blood. My dry lips would crack and bleed before I took serious consideration into using balmy salve and I could flicker out my taste buds for just one suggestion of it. A solid ball of rotting blood is in my mouth -- _his blood? _-- and the rancor makes me want to vomit.  
  
After I manage to ingest it, I decide that a glass of cold water will dispose of the acerbic and dry aftertaste on my tongue. I climb out of bed, careful not to hit my head or rouse Wormmon, and pad into the kitchen. It's on the way back that I spot the new mirror, my teary and disheveled state, and . . . I sit down, bewildered.  
  
And it is later that I take the penknife from my desk . . . and . . . words, thoughts, feelings . . .  
  
A pair of hands falls onto my shoulders when all of it is done. I investigate upward, sniffling.  
  
I've never seen him look so sad.  
  
I don't know if I'm grateful or disturbed. His penchant for icy gazes appears to have waned; the formerly omnipresent glacial quality of his eyes is missing, as though broken away by a warm tidal flow. The now unhampered topaz, clear like a diamond and still capable of being just as splitting, is alarmingly incongruous to what my reeling mind can recall. The malignancy is gone. There is something more _human_ now.  
  
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.  
  
I'm not even surprised he's here. His tension is apparent with the shell of cold gloss stripped crudely away; like it's a mistake, that he shouldn't be here, and . . . well. My shoulders are given a squeeze, crooked though they may be in the awkward position I'm sitting in. I am back against my haunches, knees bent inward and weight tilting towards one, and my head craned to the side and back to look up the length of clothed arm to his face. I probably look like hell. The tears are incidental now. I've lamented enough.  
  
He is all together morose in the colors he's donning: a beryl sweater and pair of blue jeans dark enough to be considered midnight if minded improperly. The wool of his cuffs brushes against my neck, where my raven hair had been pushed behind my ear at some point in our silent contemplation of one another. His smile is melancholy. He feels he has been late for something; the disquiet on his face is as readable as a book; he has always been so _punctual _in his exploits. He reminds me of the White Rabbit, forever obsessing over his pocket-watch and its Victorian hands. His disappointment in himself is dense.  
  
I want to tell him it's okay; I'm okay. But I can't seem to find the words.  
  
I don't remember him ever crying before. He is now, and I can't help but marvel at that fact:_But whom are you crying for? Yourself? . . . Or is it I too now?_  
  
I take Osamu's hand in my own, and let him help me to stand.  
  
"I was too late," he whispers past his throaty tears, bowing his head as he regards the effeminate hand in his grasp. Confusion pours over me, and I tilt my head just slightly, listening. "I thought that I . . . maybe . . ."  
  
"Onii . . . Onii-san . . . ?"  
  
"Just turn around, damn it!"  
  
I do just as he orders, unquestioning. Everything suddenly seems clearer and sharper but darker, as though the Kaiser's goggles had been slipped over my head. _I'm_ lying there, facedown on the jejune fuchsia carpeting, one arm splayed to the side and the other curled under my body to reach in the same direction.  
  
The only reflection in the mirror is of my crumpled body, resembling that of a fallen dove, paralyzed by Coccidiosis at the base of an autumnal tree in a forest of uncaring shrubbery. The silver of proemial sunrise casts my hair in an aluminum glaze. It's going to be five o'clock soon. I have soccer practice this morning.  
  
I take a halting step backwards; luckily my brother is there to catch hold of me before I can fall once more. I have found the rest of the picture in my search. Burgundy gashes flay my wrists' veins open both horizontally and vertically, resembling a pair of very fleshy and untidy T-style lacerations. A pool of this ichor has spread out a least a half foot from where my hands rest, one loosely clasped over a gold-handled blade, staining the sleeves of my pajamas crimson. I must have been there for quite some -- oh shit. The Primary Village, when I -- and my wrists -- the penknife -- I was distracted by the daydream . . . oh . . . fuck! I couldn't stop myself! And afterward . . . but I . . . I was seeing what I wanted to see: that I stopped in time . . .  
  
I stand there for a long time, trying to process everything.  
  
My brother tugs on my wrist, this one unbroken and perfect. "Ken . . . it's time to go."  
  
"Where are we going?" I ask him, one arm wrapped tightly around myself.  
  
He just smiles sadly, tears still present. "You know the place. It's where your happiness is epitomized, where you can taste the sunshine on your tongue, run through an open field, and watch the sky in its summer blue robes . . . where we'll chase butterflies together through the flowers, and play any game you want, Ken-chan . . ."  
  
I nod, breaking my eyes away from my . . . "You heard my plan that day, in the graveyard?"  
  
"Yes, I did."  
  
"Onii-san . . . what's the meaning of life?"  
  
He winds his fingers around my forearm. He's warm. I never imagined he'd feel so . . . real. "Life is but a prelude," he answers, directing me towards the balcony, where already the shut glass is starting to swim together and brighten to make a glowing white frame. I can smell honeysuckle. "What comes _after _it holds all the meaning."  
  
I turn my head back one last time before I go through the gateway. I bite back the bile, trying to sum up all I could say . . . my parents, Wormmon . . . Daisuke-chan . . .  
  
"I love you all. We'll see each other again someday, ne? . . . Good-bye."  
  
My alarm clock begins ringing as I step into the light.

* * owari * *


	6. Epilogue

* * *  
  
_"Carve your name on hearts and not marble."_  
  
* * *

"Thank you for coming," Ichijouji Michiru murmured solemnly, tying a malachite-colored scarf around her neck in consideration of the gloaming's chill outside. Daisuke noticed she looked twenty years older than she actually was. He wondered how old _he _looked. She went on, also tugging a pair of marigold lady's gloves over worn, wrinkled hands. Calmly, so calmly; she must still be in shock, he thought. "He would have appreciated it. You know the way to his room -- of course you do . . . you can take whatever you like. It's a tradition, sort of . . . loved ones take a momento to let those who've passed away live on in their hearts. Ken . . . he -- he always delighted in the idea."  
  
He didn't know what to say, so he nodded. _Ichijouji . . ._  
  
"Mareo and I are going to the Daioh Temple in Kyoto for a few days," the woman provided, fishing around in her jacket. The premature silver in her brunette hair caught the light and shimmered while she searched. She withdrew her fingers in a jingle of metal clinking against metal; took off one particular key on the ring to press into Daisuke's unresisting palm. "This is a spare to the apartment. Lock up for us, please?"  
  
"Okay," he affirmed, russet eyes flickering down toward the warm piece of metal he held.  
  
"You . . . can keep it if you like, too," she said, hesitating slightly. The leftover keys were placed back into the lapelled coat. "So if you ever want to come over . . ."  
  
"Ichijouji-san?" he requested softly, not looking up.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
". . . Have the others stopped by yet?" he asked, gaze seeking out hers in that moment. She was thunderstruck with how despondent he looked; how dim his maple eyes were. Hadn't he always been so full of life, every time she saw him? But -- but that was before . . .  
  
"They did," she responded, tending to a very pale smile. "None of them took anything. They didn't want to. Hikari-san and her brother brought a nice batch of cookies. A few also inquired about Wormmon, but I said that he --"  
  
"-- is with Veemon," Daisuke finished for her, unable to maintain eye contact any longer. His fingers closed tightly over the key, imprinting the ridges into his awaiting skin for a brief bite of pain. The image of his partner desperately trying to console the dismantled jasper centipede came unbidden. There was nothing _he _could do to help. He'd lost his chance already. "He's better off there, I think."  
  
"Me too. Thank you again, Daisuke-san . . ."  
  
And they were gone. Daisuke didn't remember seeing Ken's father walk by.  
  
Shrugging this off blandly, he turned and went to the end of the living area; the first door on the right, across from a furbished side-table and potted bird's-nest fern. The domicile was completely silent, save for the auricular hum of the venting units and the incessant whirring of something beyond the door he stopped in front of. Unconcerned, Daisuke pushed it ajar readily and finished his journey. He slid the gift (of sorts) into the pocket of his somber slacks.  
  
The door clicked shut somewhere behind him as he cast a glance around the room, still just as he remembered it from the many, many times he visited for a multitude of reasons. Ken sitting at the desk, lecturing him over how _pi _didn't fundamentally mean that there were fruit-fillings involved; Ken pointing out to him the lesser-known constellations from the balcony; Ken kicking his ass -- he admitted it now -- at the video games he had guardedly kept away in his closet with their consoles . . . at least until Daisuke found them one very silly afternoon of rummaging through Ken's things. ("Even your _boxers_ are gray!" Daisuke exclaimed, brandishing the underwear. Their owner blushed garnet to the roots of his hair.)  
  
Wrinkling his nose, he smelled something that had definitely _not _been there the last he dropped in. The air was heavy with diluted bleach and other ammonia-like solvents. An old fan, wheezing and whirring as it undulated slowly, had been set down beside an antediluvian floor-mirror. It was directing what noxious fumes it could towards the open sliding glass doors and much more pleasantly scented air beyond. The carpet was dry and unsoiled; Daisuke could tell. The odor lingered, allowing him to make his own conclusions . . .  
  
"Was this where it happened?" he queried aloud, almost not recognizing his own voice. He took a few steps in the direction of the mirror, uncharacteristically staggered and unconfident. His voice rose in pitch as he settled to a stop a foot from the foul-smelling patch of thistle carpeting and its only observer prior to his arrival. "How . . . how could you do this . . ."  
  
No one replied save for the squeaky rotary blades of the fan at his feet.  
  
"You could've talked to me!" he cried, pausing to listen to his words reverberate off of the walls of the empty room. His seething countenance was flashed to the mirror on a vagary, fuscous eyes dwindling into choleric slits. He was positively gaunt, and appeared to be very exhausted and fatigued on top of that; the reflective surface exposed this and his anger soared to new heights. His hands became shaky fists. "You could have, if -- if something was bothering you, Ichijouji! So why? Why did you do it?"  
  
_. . . whirrrr . . . squeak . . . whirrrr . . . squeak . . ._  
  
"Why did you leave everyone -- leave _me_?! WHY?!"  
  
_Crack_.  
  
A tracery of chrome lines, intersecting and breaking with one another in a pattern not unlike an intricate spider's web, corkscrewed outward across the mirror from the epicenter: Daisuke's fist planted firmly at the midpoint. The glass fissures gleamed like the profiles of curved tacks, pricking his white knuckles where each edge had been made lethally razor-sharp. He withdrew his hand, only glancing indifferently to its surface. The skin was torn in places; already ruby egressed into view in attenuate rivulets. Experimenting, he flexed his fingers slowly; the cuts darkened with fresh blood.  
  
Shards of the mirror, broken away, collapsed in a cascade of shining silver at his feet; splintered further twice more. The dissonance almost drowned his observation: "So . . . is this what you felt, Ichijouji . . . ?"  
  
He shook himself, looking away from the schism of his reflection and ignoring the pain and wound entirely. His very first impulse was to collect Ken's crest and other Chosen ornaments. He went to the nearby computer desk and opened the northernmost drawer, as this was where he had last seen the media-acclaimed prodigy tuck them away orderly. There was a lot more in there than he thought. He disturbed black-and-white composition notebooks, on the brink of falling apart from immoderate use; a lump of tea candles (pinkhazelolive!) tied up in plastic wrap followed, which held no meaning to him. Stray pencils, wood shavings . . . and finally, a puce rectangle inscribed with a rose, the dark D-3, and a uniform D-Terminal.  
  
Kindness. Ken is -- _was_ Kindness . . .  
  
Biting back a scream, Daisuke took all three items and shut the top-drawer stridently. Its other contents rattled.  
  
He looked up after taking a step back to settle his nerves. His breath caught. He surely hadn't seen _this _before: a frame of eggshell white had been used to hem a mat with four individual "compartments," all marked off by thick black lines. This was hanging on the wall as though just another painting. (It certainly wasn't.) Each carefully measured "box" contained one item: an insect with its beauty presentable because of pins that skewered the tips of unfurled wings. Butterflies. Four different species with their ephemeral lives on display for Daisuke's eyes, taunting him with an unwelcome pondering . . .  
  
Ken was only a fledgling butterfly, emerging from his cocoon in a natural process of life . . . to be caught in a downpour five minutes after taking to the skies. He the pristine being, dying from the most impossible to grasp and violent manner . . . the wrong place at the wrong time . . . when the flight-granting powdery sheen was washed away permanently . . . sending him plummeting to the wet ground while the angels cried selfishly above.  
  
Before he even really understood what he was doing, Daisuke set down the digital devices and tore the thin case from its place above the desk. The balcony door was already open. He quickly strode out to the steel railings that prevented him from falling and peered over the edge, the portrait-sized canvas held parallel to his position.  
  
He didn't know the names of any of them. He didn't need to. Suspiring inaudibly, his fingers wrapped clumsily about the head of the pins, and then extracted every last one from the material they were stuck into. He prudently lifted the wholly brittle butterflies from their place -- God knows how long they had been there -- and let each spiral off the side, one by one, lifeless despite their illusion of flight upon a lenient breeze . . .  
  
"There . . ."  
  
The Blue Metalmark went first, royal sapphire blue scales refracting the sun's rays and scintillating majestically, before being blown rather forcefully out of sight. _ His hair._  
  
"Now you all . . ."  
  
A Sickle-Winged Skipper lasted much longer, despite the blotchy spots of ash-gray that marred otherwise iridescent magenta. Daisuke watched until it too was gone. _His eyes . . ._  
  
"You'll all be free . . ."  
  
Despite its commonplace misgivings, the Giant White was very exquisite. It was much larger than its companions, and tumbled downward over milky wings rather than floated, but still maintained its natural dignity while doing so. _His . . . his skin.  
  
_"Just . . . just like Ken . . ."  
  
The Ruddy Daggerwing held true to its name, pigments the color of the same coagulated maroon that hadn't fallen from Daisuke's hands. The other sides of its wings were a nutty brow and betrayed its deep red, if only for the sake of looking like dead leaves the majority of its short-lived airtime. _And his . . . his blood . . .  
  
_He dropped the frame. At his left, it clanked woodenly on the concrete.  
  
He felt lightheaded. What was he doing? Oh yeah. He needed to take something else, something . . . closer to Ken than a lot of what was stockpiled in the room behind him.  
  
The closet. Its setup was very inelegant, a tad messy for the usually so perfectionist Ichijouji, and was full of boxes and clothes on metal hangers he had never seen Ken wear before. A checkered soccer ball was stuck in one corner while a jersey bearing the white letters "TFC" on the front and "#7" on the back mingled with the bleaker formal wear. Its somber peridot and jet fabric, breathable, stuck out like a sore thumb. Daisuke immediately grabbed for the ball first.  
  
A piece of paper fluttered the ground, suggestive of the falling butterflies:  
  
_Soccer with Motomiya. Six PM._  
  
He hadn't imagined that Ken would have had to remind himself. That note with its appointment was dictating their plans for today. They were going to meet at the soccer field. They were going to play soccer; Daisuke was going to let Ken win because he didn't want his best friend to feel bad (of course, because that's how it always went), and . . .  
  
He lost his grip on the black-and-white sphere, wondering in the back of his mind about perhaps building up his hand strength. Before it fell to the carpet innocuously, however, he reared a foot back in the same breath, launching all his strength into its connection with the worn two-tone leather of the ball. _TH-WHOCK!  
  
_It instantaneously went loose as a reckless blur, making contact with three different surfaces before Daisuke could blink. After nearly putting a hole in the wall, it struck the ladder to the raised bed at an angle and made an unstoppable beeline for his head. Its travels were halted after that collision, resulting in a migraine and short trip to an adverse sitting position. The soccer ball landed harmlessly some feet away and rolled to a standstill.  
  
He felt like the world was laughing at him; he shut his eyes to ward off sour tears. _Ken . . . Ken wouldn't have laughed at me . . . he would have rushed over, and asked if I was okay or not, and . . ._  
  
_"Daisuke-kun!"_  
  
His lids flew upward like untied sashes. Ken was kneeling beside him, lips etched just the slightest bit downward; lilac eyes, so crystalline, defined with the shades of intense distress. A cool palm had been pressed against the source of his throbbing headache, soothing the unerringly bruised lump of skin with a chaste touch. His mouth felt dry. He didn't do anything but stare at the one opposite of him, taking in hitched breaths.  
  
"Ken . . . Ichijouji, I'm fine," he croaked, voice cracking. He wanted to push Ken's hands away, he wanted to do a lot of things: ask him why, punish him, hug him and never let go, cry into his shoulder, stroke his hair . . .  
  
_"Are you sure you're all right?"_ Ken whispered, one hand slipping down to Daisuke's tense shoulder. He was afraid that if he looked, he would see only bleeding wrists. _"That looked like it hurt an awful lot. I think you need an ice pack."_  
  
He shook his head furiously. This wasn't right. Ken was gone. "No! I don't want an ice pack. Ken, why did you go? Why did you do that?"  
  
_"Daisuke . . ." _the voice that was undeniably his best friend's trailed, girasol painted eyes dropping downward as they customarily did whenever he was ashamed of something. Daisuke realized that the suffocating stench of bleach was almost completely gone. _"-- Your hand!"_  
  
"That's from . . . I broke your mirror," he said sheepishly, unable to prevent himself from slipping back into the mirage that Ken hadn't died; he wasn't buried next to his brother in the cemetery. "I'm sorry."  
  
_"We'll have to get that cleaned up right away,"_ Ken soberly replied, peering at him closely. _"It could get infected. Come on, Daisuke."_

"Ken . . ."

_"Yes?"_

"Just don't -- don't -- leave me again . . ." the Motomiya boy stammered, tears rolling down his cheeks. He raised a hand to touch the silk-spun blue hair. It never dawned on him from that moment on that Ken wasn't really there.  
  
Ken ghosted his lips over Daisuke's forehead. The recipient nearly convulsed.  
  
_"I won't."_


End file.
